burmafrd;4316666 said:
that is exagerated as regards the missile threat. Yes if you get close enough to a coast. But no carrier is going to do that. And all the missile wonks find out again and again just how easy it is to jam guidance and targeting systems. The farther the missile has to fly the easier it is to mess up. AND high speed missiles are worse; all you have to do is just mess it up for an instant and it will miss. Now if you are using nuclear warheads all bets are off everywhere and no ship will matter; nothing else will either.
They have been saying the carrier is doomed for about 20 years now. Supposedly the Russians were talking up one of their missiles; turns out it was a turkey. Missile wonks are mostly talk and not all that much action.
That's dismissing the fact that you can send out cruise missiles via low flying aircraft thereby extending the range of the long range and medium range to well beyond 1000 nm. They can still be satellite navigated, contour of the Earth navigated, Earth's magnetic field navigated, remote visually operated, use star guidance, and that's just the one's I've read about.
When the chips are on the table, I'll take the missile systems over the surface fleet all day every day. You lose a ship, it takes years to build a new one and an huge amount of logistics to operate a task force. I'll get on the phone and have a 100 new tomahawks ready to go a month from now.
It really comes down to allocation of resources. The ship-of-the-line, the battle wagons of the dreadnaught era, the battleships, and the carrier task force all are made to project power and national prestige in their own time. They are also incredible expensive to operate, and a pair of missiles hitting amidships will take any one vessel out of the surface fleet for months.
No, I'll take my drones dropping cruise missiles over a surface vessel thank ya very much.
FWIW, the British admiralty were terrified of the missiles the ill-trained Argentinian pilots had at their disposal. You know, the Argentinian air force pilots that didn't even know enough to bank when being attacked from behind? Their biggest concern was losing their carriers to a missile attack and had concerns that losing one or more of them would lead to a prolonged engagement with an uncertain outcome.
Despite a major lack of adequate training, they still managed to sink a British destroyer with short-range Exocets, and damage several other ships. The British concern was very well founded.
